


The Sun and Other Nameless Stars

by orphan_account



Series: It Must Be Destiny [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Game), Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Nightmares, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Titans, Warlocks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 13:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4180830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan and Geoff are called out to a patrol by their friends Jack and Burnie when the truth finally slips out one night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun and Other Nameless Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This...could be (?)...a prequel story to my main OC Destiny story going on - wherein Geoff and Ryan actually build their relationship here and not in my own story.
> 
> Also, leave me with my headcanon that futuristic Geoff and Ryan have things for our music now. I think it'd be adorable to look back on us and go "yeah, I can get down to this".

“ _Geoff, I swear to Christ-”_

_“-We will find you, acting on your best behaviour-!”_

The younger Titan sighed through his comm. Ever since landing on the Old City’s plains, Geoff had been flicking through his playlist on the search for the right song. Apparently the Speaker’s words had gone completely over his head that this was meant to be a _silent_ sweep of the ruins of Russia.

Geoff chuckled slightly through the comm and hummed the rest of the beat, to the relief of Ryan’s eardrums. If any of the others were here, maybe it would be bearable. Gavin would sing along until he got the back of Ryan’s gun to the head, or Jack would shoot a harmless spark of magic to his feet.

The plains of Old Russia were nice, albeit covered in Fallen squads that took every opportunity to attack the two Guardians patrolling. Ryan would constantly bring up his messenger to comm back to Burnie to inform him about how many squads they found, where they were and if the complete city was lost or not.

Ryan adjusted the grip on his rifle, freeing on hand to pull down his scarf down from his helmet. The air in the City was dangerous to most, filled with fumes of toxins and radiation that wiped out the old city’s inhabitants all those centuries ago. How the Fallen survived breathing it in, he never understood, but it added to his idea that they were truly monsters.

“ _Rye_ ,” Geoff’s voice came through the comm.

The Titan looked over his shoulder to the Titan.

“ _How long will this patrol be?_ ”

Ryan shrugged. “ _No longer than our usual ones_.”

“ _Then why didn’t we bring the full team_ ,” Geoff tilted his head, and a smile broke out, unknown to the Titan as the Titan’s visor was tinted. “ _Did you want me all to yourself?”_

Ryan scoffed at the humour in the younger’s voice before walking forward to scope out a steep that lead further into the plains of the city. There wasn’t much to see, only some ruins of old space-crafts and ones recently left behind by defeated by the Fallen.

Geoff’s voice came through the comm again. “ _We should get going, the sun’s getting low_.”

Ryan looked up and saw that the sky had become darker. They had never stayed out in a sector until night, except that one time that they really lost track of time and regretted it as soon as they landed back in the Tower, only to hear Burnie’s rage as he complained that he nearly lost his best men.

Ryan nodded and started to head back to their ship with Geoff in tow. He grunted when he heard the Titan’s music start back up and he started to sing – badly – the rest of the words.

“ _Geoff, I swear by the Speaker, if you sing one more line-”_

 _“-I thought Tears for Fears was your favourite!”_ Geoff said smirking into his comm. “ _You always have it playing in your room or in the hangar_.”

Ryan sighed. “ _Let’s just get back to the ship – quietly, please.”_

True to his words, Geoff kept the journey back relatively silent, except for the occasional comments about what the Old City must have been like. The library and the Speaker offered only so much insight into the world before the Traveller arrived all those years ago, but Geoff always wanted to know more.

They landed in a secluded part of the City, wherein they could transport by their Ghosts back to the ship with relative ease. Geoff walked up beside Ryan and held his hand out for his Ghost to deploy. Ryan followed the motion and within minutes of commanding, they spawned into the cockpit of the ship.

Geoff unlatched his helmet and tossed it into the space between their seats. Ryan did the same and breathed in the oxygen inside the aircraft. It was better than the filtered, man-made crap that flowed through their helmets. This had a sort of muskiness and realness to it.

“We should head home,” Geoff said as he pulled the controls of the aircraft towards him, igniting the engine and taking off from Earth with a jolt. Ryan let his head drop back into his chair as he watched the Earth slowly fade away, only replaced with the debris-ridden area of its damaged hemisphere.

Ryan took one last look at Old Earth before it disappeared in swirls and lines of light as they bolted into space. Most of the trip home was relatively quiet, with the occasional comment from Geoff about how the stars looked whenever they were among them. Ryan had only huffed a laugh, commenting on how philosophical the older man was getting lately. It had earned him a whack to the head, but it was worth it seeing Geoff splutter and get flustered.

A new outpost was posted on Venus, manned by Jack and Burnie. The warlock and the titan had requested that they had come days ago, but they had never found time. The Speaker had them running around the planets surveying and collecting items to study. In Geoff’s opinion, that wasn’t the job of a titan. They blew stuff up and fought to the death. Warlocks were the ones obsessed with learning about the world before.

Ryan must have dosed off as when he opened his eyes, the green and yellow hues of Venus laid outside the windows of the ship. He looked over to see Geoff idly manoeuvring the ship to enter the hemisphere with little turbulence as possible. He looked over the other man and gave a smile. “You finally woke up then?”

“Was I asleep long,” Ryan rubbed at his eyes.

Geoff laughed. “Even with the speed on this thing, you still slept the hours of travelling from Earth to here.”

Ryan sat up in his chair. The world below slowly came into focus, with forests, valleys and run down cities starting to take shape. “Where is this outpost?”

Geoff hummed. “Jack sent coordinates to your Ghost.”

Ryan pulled out the cube and let it deploy into his hand. Blue lights came from within as the cube floated outwards and began scanning their surroundings. **“Do you acquire my assistance, Ryan?”** Ghost’s voice came from the cube.

“Get me the coordinates of the Guardian’s patrol station in the Ishtar region of Venus.”

**“The one’s from Jack?”**

“Yes please, Ghost,” Ryan said. He watched the exact location of the station appear on the view screen of the aircraft. Geoff took note of the location and swerved the aircraft to fly it towards a rundown part of the city that used to be there.

Ryan let Ghost come back together into the cube as he put it back into his pocket. He reached for his helmet; picking up Geoff’s as well as the elder man lowered the ship onto a large piece of grassland outside the city. “It should only be a short walk in,” Geoff said as he put on his helmet and secured his oxygen tubes. “ _Burnie should meet us there_.”

True to his word, the titan was there armed with a pulse rifle and decked in heavy armour. He nodded to the two men and led them into the city. Ryan took note of the robotic bodies of the Vex that littered the ground.

“ _Have you had any problems keeping the fort down, Burns?”_

Burnie looked over his shoulder to Ryan. “ _None so far – we’ve managed to keep several groups back, but we need more guardians and more supplied to hold it down permanently_.”

Geoff followed along silently, but occasionally shifting his handle on his gun strapped to his leg. Ryan knew the movement all too well: he spent years travelling with the titan, ever since they both tumbled out of the training camps together, trigger-happy and looking for a fight from anything other than a guardian. Geoff keeping a hand on his gun meant he was uncomfortable. Ryan couldn’t blame him: his own hands started to shake at the memories that began to seep back into his mind from all those years ago.

He shook his head and offered a hand to the shoulder to keep Geoff’s mind in the present. The other titan laughed something strained through their shared comm.

Burnie led them into a building: it was mostly intact, with a few shattered windows and falling tiles from its roof. Inside opened out into something similar to a hospital. Guardians swept from one side to the other where their injured comrades lay on make-shift beds. Geoff took a sharp intake of breath at the sight. The entire ground floor was like that, with Jack being to the back, at the foot of the stairs to the next level. Ryan almost hesitated to think that the rest of the floors were like this.

Jack looked up through his visor and waved them over, handing a tablet screen to another warlock who went to take care of some patients. Even without the visor covering his face, Ryan knew that the man was frowning. In neither of their lives did they see so much injured in one place. Ryan saw something just as close, but not to this extent.

Geoff was the one to speak up first through the comm. “ _How can we help?”_

Jack sighed. _“For now, rest. Tomorrow morning I want you to scout out as many Fallen camps as you can. Burnie says they managed to repel as much as they could to the city’s walls, but they could be coming back._ ”

“ _We don’t have eyes everywhere,”_ Burnie commented, “ _but I’d appreciate whatever help you gave us.”_

“ _Does the Speaker know about this_?” Ryan said as he nodded his head back to the floor of injured.

Jack just shrugged. “ _He knows we’re having trouble containing the city – he doesn’t know how much people we’re losing by trying to.”_

Geoff straightened up. “ _We’ll do our best to scout what we can and give you a detailed report.”_

 _“Thank you Geoff_ ,” Jack replied.

Burnie turned to the two titans. _“You can have some of my men if you want. They know the city like the back of their hands.”_

Ryan shook his head. _“We work better in twos. We’ll get through the city quicker with smaller numbers.”_

Jack looked past the men and saw another stretcher of an injured guardian scout be hauled into the building. “ _I need to see to that,”_ he said quickly, brushing past the titans. Burnie cleared his throat and began to step up the stairs.

“ _There are rooms up here_ ,” Burnie said. Geoff and Ryan followed behind until they got to the landing, free of any injured guardians and instead home to crates of ammunition and health packs. As the pair walked past, more created entitled FOOD and AMMUNITION began to stack up, almost creating another wall. Ryan and Geoff shared a look at the amount of supplies.

“ _Oxygen reserves have been put into the building, so the helmets aren’t necessary,”_ Burnie said as he unlatched the clasps on his helmet, pulling it from his head. Ryan took note of a new scar running through his eyebrow.

The other two titans unlatched their helmets and took in the air in the building. It wasn’t clean, but it was bearable. The rooms up on the first floor were small, with two bed shoved to either side of the walls. It reminded Ryan of the Tower’s quarters, but they didn’t have questionable growths seeping in through the roof’s tiles.

Burnie left them after pointing out where stashes of fresh, cleaned water were and a ration of food. Geoff pulled apart what was in the packet and tested it, handing it over to Ryan knowing that the man hadn’t eaten since they left the Tower that morning.

Underneath their titan armour were plain shirts and pants, and Ryan didn’t hesitated to pull of gauntlets and his chest armour before sitting on the bed to pull of his boots. Geoff left on his boots, he always did whenever they were camping somewhere – “ _You never know when you have to run Ryan: and if we do, I’m not wasting time or having my dignity be torn down by not wearing armour_ ”.

Night had begun to gather, and it was strange. Geoff’s Ghost had given them the time, but outside the sky was still swarming with lights.

“You never get used to it, do you?” Geoff piped up. Ryan looked over to the other bunk to see Geoff staring straight through the cracks in the ceiling to the warmly-lit sky. “We get to explore and see places like this, all the while protecting people. It could be the best job out there.”

“Some people would disagree,” Ryan said sitting back into the bunk and lying down on his back with his hands behind his head. He felt Geoff’s gaze fall onto him. He heard the sigh the man gave. He knew the questions that were coming.

“Would these particular people give up their job, if given the chance?” Geoff said quietly. In the silent room, it sounded loud to Ryan. He maintained his vigil on the roof above him.

He heard Geoff swing his legs to the side of the bed and sit up. “I know that these particular people were given a chance,” he said quietly, “a lot of chances actually. But they still went through with it.”

“Geoff-”

“-No!” Geoff stood up from the bed and stalked over. “If you want out, take it up with the Speaker. He’ll understand, but don’t bitch to me because you regret the decision years later.”

“I don’t regret it,” Ryan said calmly, looking up at the man standing over his bunk. “I said I would still protect people.”

“Even after what happened,” Geoff finished for him. He swatted at Ryan’s hip and sat down on the space in the bunk the younger man gave him. “I still have nightmares, you know. I remember everything: the landing, the crew heading into the nest, the gunfire...and the two of us staggering out by ourselves. I remember it all. And we were only kids.”

“We were adults.”

“You weren’t,” Geoff admonished. “You had just come out of training camp at sixteen. Why you were even there I don’t know. You didn’t have any experience, but I did. You still came along.”

Ryan watched Geoff as he started to fidget with his hands – another tick Ryan knew about him. He reached out and clasped both of Geoff’s hands in one of his to stop the movement. “It was a long time ago,” he said, “we should leave it.”

Geoff’s eyes were still trained on him. It was a while before he spoke again. “Leave what’s dead, dead.”

Ryan nodded simply. They still stayed like that for another while before Geoff’s voice came out in one strained chord. “I think it will happen tonight – the nightmares. It will happen. I don’t want to be over there by myself. I know you’re an arm’s reach away but-”

“-Get in,” Ryan said curtly, shuffling over until his back hit the wall and he had freed up space for Geoff to lie down. The older man sighed when his head hit the pillow and he knew that the warmth behind him would anchor his mind to his body, and not let it ramble like it would normally do whenever night drew in.

“I don’t mind doing this for you,” Ryan’s voice came from behind him. It was quiet, almost a whisper. “It keeps me grounded too.”

The edge of Geoff’s lips turned upwards into a smile before he settled down into the bed.

Darkness began to creep inwards as they both drifted off into sleep, confident with the knowledge that they wouldn’t keep each other from floating away into the depths of the unknown.


End file.
